First Kill
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Private Eye Writers of America's Best Private Eye Novel Contest
Hank Berlin and Jack Drucker had been friends since grade school---and both in love with Elizabeth Kermanski. Early on, however, Hank saw that he was out of the running, and made the best of it. They still remained friends. The friendship was only torn when Jack enlisted in the army to serve in Vietnam, and Hank, who was against the war, traveled to Canada to escape the draft. After that, the two men never spoke again, and Elizabeth followed her husband's lead.
When amnesty was granted to expatriates by President Carter, Hank returned to their small town and set up shop as a private investigator. Jack went to work on his father's local newspaper, winning praise for his initiative to find good and surprising stories. Until someone shot him dead in his car, which was parked on a lonely street well after midnight.
Still somewhat under Elizabeth's spell, Hank agrees to take her on as a client. Hank's cases as a private detective have been somewhat limited; their town was not a place for spectacular crimes. But he begins looking for any possible lead, and is not surprised to find that many prominent people have secrets in their lives. Could star reporter Jack Drucker have been the target of someone's need for silence?
First Kill is the first in what promises to be a riveting mystery series and a fantastic fiction debut for Michael Kronenwetter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A prolific author of books on politics and history (Prejudice in America, etc.), Kronenwetter makes a solid fiction debut with this soft-boiled mystery, which won the 2004 PWA/SMP Best Private Eye Novel contest. PI Hank Berlin, who's juggling work with caring for his six-year-old son in the small Wisconsin town of Pinery Falls while his ex-wife is away on business, reluctantly agrees to help Liz Drucker, who broke Hank's heart in high school, find the killer of her husband and his one-time best friend, Jack, a reporter who was shot dead in his car. It's up to Hank to determine which, if any, of the many stories Jack was working on could have led to murder. Hank uncovers an abundance of shocking secrets, all of them providing plenty of motive, from smalltown political corruption and the Milwaukee mafia to undisclosed Vietnam War crimes and teenage prostitution. Kronenwetter throws out enough red herrings and plot twists to keep the pages turning to the satisfying, if somewhat improbable, conclusion.
